The Lilith Blog

June 23, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Going by the Numbers

We’re back to the numbers this week on the campaign trail…

A new study is out about how the McCain and Obama proposed tax plans would affect two specific focus families. The families chosen were the Obama and McCain families (neat trick). Check out the results here. Essentially, if you’re in the top 1% of the population, you’re going to do okay either way. The Obama plan will give you a little cash back, and the McCain plan a little more. If you’re in the top tenth of a percentile (.1%), however, you’ll probably be voting Republican, because you’ll be getting maybe thirty times more back under McCain. Um…yeah.

I’d like to take a moment to point out while members of the McCain campaign have suggested that the economy can take cuts of this size in spite of the opinions of the experts and McCain’s voting record, other experts happily point out that neither plan will generate enough income to even begin to address of deficit. Keep that in mind.

So I don’t think that I need to make the point, if you’re already on this site, that women aren’t quite caught up economically in this country, nor suggest that the recent Ledbetter case in the Supreme Court points to the fact that may be even easier to get screwed economically as a woman in America and therefore maybe women should particularly want a tax plan that evens out the load a little. (But if you’re looking more on that follow those links for some good reading.)

No, I’d like to talk some numbers to some Jews who like numbers. I know, I know, your primary concern is Israel, but let’s talk very concretely for just a moment or two, okay? I’ve always been a big fan of voting where you live, and let’s face it: no U.S. president will be in a position to snub Israel. So let’s chill and talk about the fact that while Jews have done very well for ourselves in America, we don’t all fit neatly into the category of “top-tenth percentile.” If 20% if NYC Jews below the poverty line in 2004 doesn’t make you think twice, let me remind you that in the test run on the two plans, the poorer of the two, the Obamas, made nearly one million dollars per year—a salary comfortably inside “upper middle class” range. They may get a little more money back from the government under the McCain plan, but they’re doing all the economic work for the top tenth of their numbers. They’re getting screwed in the ratio. So we don’t even need to address how the ordinary worker is getting screwed by oil prices. Let us talk of Medicaid and Medicare and healthcare, and how the tinkering-with of these things is going to affect the upper middle class. Probably, not for the better. I’m just giving you the numbers.

–Mel Weiss.

The Lilith Blog

June 20, 2008 by admin

Not Pregnant

Hi Tammy, it’s me.

I hope I’m not catching you at a bad moment. I have some big news. It means a lot to me to share it with you. Do you have a minute? You might need to catch your breath when I tell you this, and you should definitely be sitting down. OK, here goes. Well, you know all our friends are getting pregnant these days? Sarah, Stacy, Edna, Rachel – yes, it’s quite the thing to do. Well, I have news for you: I’m not pregnant. Yup – I’m not pregnant!!!! Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it myself, and it’s been nearly three months already. I hope you don’t think it’s too early to tell, but I’ve been keeping the news to myself for what seems like ages. Three months of not being pregnant, but I didn’t want to say anything, because
you know how it is, in the beginning you can never be sure, maybe that period was just a fluke. But it’s real, and I’m sure of it! For the past three months, ever since all our friends starting getting pregnant, I’ve been feeling just awful. Oh, it was the worst. I’d wake up in the morning—especially before big days at work—with this horrible feeling in my stomach. I had to run to the bathroom, and there would go yesterday’s dinner. This
happened day after day, this nauseous feeling each time someone else got pregnant. I was like, gosh, not being pregnant is agonizing, how am I going to deal with this??? Anyway, my doctor tells me it’s finally behind me – from here on, not being pregnant will be a lot easier to deal with.

Except, well, you’ve got to hear this. I crave chocolate! All the time. Especially at night. I have to eat something sweet. It’s really horrible. I hope it doesn’t go on for too long, because I’m beginning to show. I mean, if this chocolate craving continues, I’m going to have to buy maternity clothes even though I’m not pregnant! Wouldn’t that be something.

Anyway, please don’t tell anyone yet—I haven’t even told my mother. I’m not ready yet, though I think she might have guessed. The other day I noticed her looking at me somewhat quizzically when I ordered a huge glass of wine at dinner. I can do that, hurrah, because I’m not pregnant!!! It’s so exciting. You’ll have to come over so I can tell you more details. But really, please don’t bring a gift. It’s not necessary. I’m just glad to have your support. Thanks so much for listening—I wanted you to be the first to know.

–Chavatzelet Herzliya

The Lilith Blog

June 18, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Queering the Conversation

Brooklyn Pride was this past Saturday night. It was intermittently pouring, and both those of us watching and the soggy marchers got soaked and didn’t really care. I love the huge excitement of the big Pride Parade, which is weeks to come yet here in NYC, but I love Brooklyn Pride because it’s a lot, well, queerer in a way—in a good way. Occasionally the big parade feels faintly sanitized, too clean and stale. I like to see events queered, especially in a politicized way, especially when I’m caught off guard by it. So I love when social justice stuff gets mixed up in Pride events, as it always seems to in this borough.

Today, at the “Egg Creams and Egg Rolls” event rocking the Eldridge Street Synagogue and its whole block, surprise guest Sheldon Silver (Speaker of the New York State Assembly) made many disarming remarks about the synagogue and followed up on the presenter’s brief history of the egg cream. I daydreamed through much of Speaker Silver’s talk, enjoying the architecture but a bit put off by all the nostalgia, until I heard a brave question from a random audience member: “Is the arena going to be built?” The question, referring to the Atlantic Yards debacle, was said in a defiant tone, and Speaker Silver hurriedly gave a non-answer and left. And it wasn’t the question about Atlantic Yards that got me excited (although that ridiculous, harmful and unconstitutional excuse for a public works project gets me plenty exercised), so much as the realization that I was hearing it in a synagogue—a converted synagogue, but still.

And I got to thinking that the first place I heard about Atlantic Yards was at my very own neighborhood synagogue, which marched in the Pride Parade, and that all the queer friends I ran into on Brooklyn Pride night were Jewish and involved in this queer political version of tikkun olam, and it made me remember that our little battles count just as much as the big ones. So, what are your small-but-vital political fights? How are you queering the conversation? Leave your thoughts below.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 18, 2008 by admin

Introductions

My name is Sarah Aronson and this is my first post on the Lilith blog. Thanks to Mel for inviting me!

A quick bio: I am living the dream in Hanover, New Hampshire. I have two kids. I recently got married. We are an interfaith family. We drink coffee and eat more chocolate than the daily allowance. We have one bathroom.

I write novels for middle grade readers and adults. My first novel, Head Case, published by Roaring Brook Press, came out last September. It is about a seventeen-year-old boy named Frank who causes a terrible car accident, leaving two people dead. He sustains a complete cervical spine injury. The novel begins after he is released from the hospital. I like to think of him as a modern Hester Prynne of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Beginnings are hard. Like any Chapter One, this entry needs to tell you who I am. What I want. And where will we be going. You need to hear my voice.

I need to hook the reader.

Here’s a story:

I grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, aka The Christmas City. Even as a young girl, I felt like the token Jew. Every December, my friends joked that ours was the “dark” house. They called me Matzoh Girl, Menorah Girl, and my favorite, The Beak. I was the Barbra Streisand of my class, a girl with a lot of drama and a lot of opinions. It wasn’t easy.

Otherness never is. And being Jewish made me different. It made me other. It made my ethnicity an issue that some found interesting, others feared. I knew this as early as first grade. I lived close enough to my school to walk. There was only one main street to cross, and that was manned by a sixth grade crossing guard. A guy with a flag. And authority.

He decided not to let me cross. He held the flag at my chest. “You have to wait,” he said. “Because you are Jewish.”

This was the late 60’s. It was a time when everyone—especially the adults—wanted to fit in. I wanted to fit in. We ate at chains and all bought the same clothes. People said: “Don’t make waves. Go another way. Cross the street somewhere else.”

That kind of advice has never worked for me. Instead, I stood my ground. I was late almost every day that year. Today, I’m more of a compromiser. Living in a rural community does not make being Jewish easy. There are many issues that bump up against my Jewish needs. I often think of Hester Prynne—how she did it. How she grew into a member of her community without giving up her identity. And I look to my children and the children of our local Jewish community and ask how best to foster a Jewish identity in a place like this.

That’s what this blog will be about. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

–Sarah Aronson

The Lilith Blog

June 18, 2008 by admin

Are Women Really Taking Over Judaism, And Is That So Bad?

The general consensus on these questions appears to be Yes, women are taking over Judaism, and Yes, that is bad. But I’m having trouble working up concern over this supposedly dire state of affairs.

A new study confirms these assertions social-scientifically, reports the Jewish Exponent, showing that among the most liberal strains of Judaism (Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal), significantly more women and girls are actively participating than are men and boys, who, one theory goes, are being alienated by women’s takeover:

Some are calling it the feminization of liberal Judaism, but few say so out loud.
“It’s not politically correct,” says Brandeis University sociologist Sylvia Barack Fishman, whose new report “The Growing Gender Imbalance in American Jewish Life” gives statistical muscle to anecdotal evidence that’s been piling up for several years in liberal Jewish circles.

Even if Fishman’s report is on-target, as someone who focuses so much on Jewish women’s achievements, I can’t help but find the “feminization of Judaism” a point of pride rather than worry.

And yet, despite what Fishman’s numbers may say, I remain unconvinced of the general takeover. Because when you look at the numbers on various lists of influential Jews, you’d still be hard-pressed to find one that’s dominated by women:
Take the umbrella organization the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, for example. Though it now has a woman at its healm (you go, June Walker), she is one of the few women among the heads of its member organizations. The breakdown is similar in the Forward’s last “Forward Fifty” feature, which included only 17 women (and that’s, given such lists in the past, a decent showing). And even NY Jewish Week’s 2008 list of “36 Under 36,” a measure of the younger generation’s Jewish innovators, includes more men than women (though the numbers are far more equitable than most such lists). So it’s hard to take the claim of women’s domination that seriously.

And anyway, the suggestion that women’s supposed domination is a “crisis” is downright offensive. Rabbi Rona Shapiro put it very well in her 2007 op-ed in the Forward, “The Boy Crisis That Cried Wolf,” excerpted here:

…Thirty-five years ago — when women were not ordained as rabbis, when girls in the Conservative movement celebrated a bat mitzvah on Friday night, when Orthodox girls did not receive an education remotely comparable to that of their brothers, when women were not called to the Torah for aliyot or allowed on the bimah at all — where were the headlines proclaiming a girl crisis?
[…]
Given the history of women’s exclusion within the Jewish community, approaching equality should be something to celebrate, not a crisis in the making.
[…]
More insidious is the assertion made by some boy-crisis advocates that men are retreating from active engagement in Jewish life because women now dominate it. This characterization simply smacks of backlash.
Women have maintained their involvement in a Judaism dominated for centuries by men, but the minute women get a toehold in leadership, men pick up and leave? Pollack, the boys’ development researcher heading up Moving Traditions’ major new initiative, refutes the inherent sexism of this argument, insisting that women’s leadership is not responsible for boys’ retreat from Jewish life.
“Boys haven’t found a way to” adapt to the sharing of power with girls and women in Judaism, he argued, “because men haven’t found a way to change.” If Jewish men, young or old, are turned off by women’s leadership, then our commitment to justice requires that we call this what it is — sexism — and work to change the attitude instead of accommodating it.
[…]
Men and women need to work together to address discrimination against women in the Jewish community, as well as men’s perception of Judaism’s irrelevance to them. We need to prepare our daughters to be both strong leaders who are well armed against the sexism they will face in the media and employment and mothers who are able to raise young men who share an interest in their sisters’ achievements, have full access to their feelings and are engaged by Jewish life.

I agree with Shapiro’s arguments, and think they are extremely important to the discussion of this issue. But, admittedly, she does ignore — as I have been until now — the most practical problem the numbers disparity presents, which is the other “crisis” making headlines, the “singles crisis.”

Fishman sees both as crises of continuity:

Fishman said that as Jewish men outside the Orthodox fold become increasingly estranged from religious and communal life, the more likely they are to marry non-Jewish women, her report suggests. And because women usually set a home’s religious tone — even if non-Jewish women are open to raising Jewish children — they’ll rarely do so because they are not encouraged by husbands who are “ambivalent at best, if not downright hostile to” Jewish tradition, she explained.
She concluded that this crisis is leading to a continuity issue that will not be resolved until liberal Judaism finds a way to engage its boys and men.

But I think Fishman’s concern over continuity is premature, and her spin on the problem, from the male perspective, seems besides the point. Rather than counting the babies who aren’t being born — an unproductive and rather silly task — we should be focusing on the more immediate issue — those Jewishly committed women who are having trouble, right now, finding Jewishly-committed men with whom to partner.
That is a point of concern, not because of the babies they’re not having, but because of the frustration and dissatisfaction they’re feeling.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

June 12, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Mr. Obama Goes to AIPAC

Shavuot was never a big-deal holiday in my family—it was pretty much the Festival of the Cheese Blintz. It’s only been in more recent years that I’ve learned about the lovely theological bases for this celebration, and worked towards understanding the sublime joy of receiving the Torah.

I received a number of great Shavuot-related press releases with excellent study suggestions from that mass of organizations we call the progressive Jewish front. I guess between that and my recent trip to San Francisco (my first), I feel that the rise of these progressive Jewish organizations (or at least what looks like a rise from where I’m sitting) really shows how we as Jewish communities are reshaping ourselves. It’s pretty awesome to watch, no?

Of course, we’re not The Establishment just yet. Fairly strong reminders of this were part of Obama’s recent speech to AIPAC–like the many attempts to address the out-of-control email rumor mill that would have you believe that Senator and presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama is a radical Muslim fundamentalist, that he wants to normalize relations with Iran, that he hates Israel. These rumors strike me, and may strike you, as totally ridiculous, but unfortunately, there are people out there who hate Obama for just these “reasons.” The speech, even a bit too hawkish for me, certainly aligned Obama with Israel, and I wondered how his much-lauded young, liberal base was going to deal. But he also did something brilliant—he reframed the question of Jewish/black relations, and he recast the history of Jewish progressivism.

I think if anything, Jews come off as too good in Obama’s narrative, but given that he’s willing to go to AIPAC to talk about Goodman, Schwerner and Cheney, he can pretty much call it like he sees it. And he sees, or understands the possible gains to seeing, a world in which progressive Jewish values are happily fulfilled, in which we support Israel both by cheering its success but also by admitting to and learning from our failures. And in which we can be reminded of our own radical pasts.

Barack Obama is conceiving of American-Israeli political relations and Jewish-American identity in a new way, and it will be a welcome change. History, I’m learning slowly, is always happening. And I think Obama’s got the right idea. I expected to be unmoved by those speeches (it’s AIPAC!), but in light of the holiday that kicks off a vital part of our history, it was wonderful to hear a Democrat talk about the glory days
of Black-Jewish relations. Let’s get back to that—let’s live up to this vision of righteousness I heard so much about. Let’s talk about how
Jewish values and liberal values fit so well, and let’s keep staying up learning together, whenever we can.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 10, 2008 by admin

Entry #1: Owning Our Processes

06/07/08

The bus sighs and coughs to a halt. I awake startled from sleep on the overnight bus from Bangkok to Mae Sot, Thailand. We’re stopped on the side of the road. It’s a thickened midnight despite my watch reading 5 a.m. A Thai police officer walks the aisles, holding his flashlight like a baton. He’s checking this seat and that, waking sleepers, checking passports. He has a blue mask over his mouth for pollution, but it makes him look menacing. He’s checking for refugees. This is how I know we’re almost in Mae Sot, a border town chock full of NGOs, Burmese refugees, police arresting unlucky migrants, and Thai folk who (mostly) don’t give two hoots. I hurry to get my passport, but the officer shakes his head. My skin tips him off; I’m of the wrong ilk or maybe the right.

I panic for a moment before I regain my calm and realize where I am. I think of home then, all I’ve left, all that lies in wait, an unfed animal at the front door. I wasn’t sure about this, pulling myself out of my life, coming back here and working with the Burmese refugee women I’ve grown to love. I knew it was the right thing, but then. Mostly I would’ve stayed for her, and that’s the one reason she told me to go.

How can I quantify this year, this lonely miracle year my mother pushed through again? It came again this past fall, a second fiercer gale, come to sweep the harvest. We held tight, blue tarp black stake. We offered her breasts and held tight the ribcage. We kept her. How could it come back, a night dream I never wanted? I moved past the question quickly enough, past the crowds and into a quieter room. Cancer patient. She’s so much more than that bare, flop-shoddy word. I deliberate, how not to cloak her in the sickbay of cliques, how not to scrub-dry the humanity out of all the clinical jargon?

How do you name her the same woman, the same perfume lingering through the years on her wintered sweaters, the same second-wave feminist who dances to Motown with two fingers towards the sun, only with a diagnosis of quickly multiplying cells? How do you reconcile a nag-drawn woman with the desire to have her live forever? How do you merge a once tenuous relationship and make it unbreakable? For once, I don’t deliberate. This union was no mistake. For once, I do.

I can’t attribute this transformation to a melding of congruent personalities. We are not soft-waxed and flame-tipped. Maybe overcommitted, oversensitive, and generous.

Perhaps it’s not us but the space between us. In that reflected pool, I now see the smallest clock and it is ticking. We don’t have the time for personalities to align or taut edges to slacken. I need to dive in. I need to love her now. I have seen the rough road and it is motherless. I will always choose the guilt-worn path, potholed, fret-marked.

Sometimes I stare blankly at the doctors, the numbers, the people in the ‘movement’ rattling off breast cancer odds. You won’t hear me ticking off stats. I am not a metronome, and this is not my piano recital (Amen). You won’t hear me waving pink flags swirled in white cursive ‘Cancer Survivor’ lettering. None of that she-beat-the-odds banter. Call it a life subjected to Jewish superstition. Call it depressive. This isn’t a survival pep rally. I want her to do more than survive. I want her to re-question, how shall I live? We all have our own process. This one’s mine.

–I. Kramer

The Lilith Blog

June 2, 2008 by admin

And Speaking of Israeli Culture…

One of the bands raising the temperature in Israel and making waves in America right now is Habanot Nechama, a group of three super-talented women, all of whom have careers in their own right, making beautiful music together. I was privileged to attend one of their recent American tour concerts, at the Highline Ballroom (up-and-comer Chana Rothman opened with a beautiful set), and was wowed. Their ultra-tight harmonies, often-quirky sensibilities, multi-lingual lyrics, and comedic inter-song banter set them apart from the pack. And there’s nothing “girl groupy” about them, just three strong women creating really powerful music together.

So since it was recently Lag B’Omer, the day in the the counting of the Omer [the mourning period between Passover and Shavuot] when music traditionally becomes acceptable again, thought I’d share some YouTube clips of Habanot Nechama. These were obviously taken from someone’s cell phone, but bear with the shaky camera and horrible lighting. It’s all about the music anyway.

“Lovers” a.k.a “Meah Achuz Or,” Habanot Nechama, at a concert commemorating the 12th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s death.

“So Far,” Habanot Nechama

–Rebecca Honig Freidman

The Lilith Blog

June 2, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Changing Times, Changing Minds

I was at the Strand bookstore when I found a forty-eight-cent copy of The Feminine Mystique. I’ll shamefully admit that the selfsame title heads a list entitled “Mel’s Summer Gotta Read!” if for no other reason than damn, you’ve got to read it. How did I make it this far in my life without having read Betty Friedan’s classic work? I’m not sure, but I’m happy to rectify the situation, and encourage everyone I know to do the same. Because it’s such an honest piece, and the historical picture she paints is so vivid, that I was able to work up a real appreciation for how radical the book must have been in the first place. (My bargain-rate copy is actually a crumbling original, and the cover breathlessly pushes the book as “The year’s most controversial bestseller!”) You can feel Friedan grappling with her imagined reader, repeating herself when necessary, reeling you in with a careful, historical, reportorial narrative until she’s got you. How it must have felt to have that book change your mind—and subsequently, your entire life. If you, like me, have somehow made it this far without this classical revolutionary text—as important as any Foucault or Fanon—get on it.

And so, in honor of my renewed respect for Betty Friedan and the feminists who’ve so radically changed the minds of so much of the world, a brief overview of some important mind-changes from the world of politics this week: (below the jump)

(more…)

The Lilith Blog

May 25, 2008 by admin

Meditation on Turning Thirty

Today is my thirtieth birthday, which falls out each year during the period in which it is traditional to learn Pirkei Avot, the tractate of the Mishnah that contains many ethical precepts and teachings relating to Jewish learning, among them the following:

Age five is for learning Torah
Age ten is for learning Mishnah
Age thirteen is for observing the commandments
Age fifteen is for learning Talmud
Age eighteen is for marriage
Age twenty is for pursuit [of a livelihood]
Age thirty is for strength….

The Mishnah seems to suggest that a person is expected to attain certain intellectual and personal milestones at particular ages. I find myself often internalizing this way of thinking. “I am almost thirty – I should think about having children!” “I need to finish the Daf Yomi cycle before I turn 35!” “Before another year passes I must learn how to drive!” And on, and on.

There is a value in this way of thinking — it challenges me to set goals for myself, and to strive to attain them. But the older I get, the more convinced I become that there is no such thing as a “right age” for anything.

Last night I had coffee with a dear friend named Mira who lives with her husband and five children in a settlement over the green line. When we first met three years ago in a Jerusalem book group, she was in a crisis because she was turning 40, and I was in a crisis because I was getting divorced. Back then, she told me she envied me because I was so young and had my life ahead of me; I told her that I envied her because she was so stable and settled and sure of her future.

Last night, over hot apple cider in a cafe in a quiet Jerusalem alleyway, it became clear that the tables had turned: I was on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, and she was planning to divorce her husband, something she has wanted to do for a while. Both of us were considerably happier than we were three years ago, though there was a certain wistfulness I sensed when I folded my bare arms over one another to stay warm in the chilly evening air. Having experienced the pain of divorce, it is hard to see someone else celebrate such a moment, especially when the couple in question has five children. And while a birthday is always a time of celebration, it is also hard to accept that time can never be retrieved, and that some decisions are indeed irreversible.

Is thirty really an age of strength, as the rabbis declare? I should like to think so. But I should like to think every age is a time of strength – the strength to face whatever challenges happen to lie in front of us at that particular moment. With the small candle in a ceramic jar flickering on the rickety café table, I close my eyes for a moment and wish for this strength to steady my steps in the years that lie ahead.

–Chavazelet Herzliya